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Friday, 31 March 2017

Japan has a certain monopoly on classic city-shredding
monsters, what with the king of monsters Godzilla and his rogue’s gallery well
and truly ingrained in the popular consciousness. But damn it all if the West
doesn’t have its own colossal champion which also represents quite a few
milestones for the art of cinema: The big bad gorilla King Kong. Whether it’s
the ground-breaking effects work of the 1933 original, the years-in-the-making
passion project of Peter Jackson’s 2005 version, to the 1960 introduction
between the beasts in King Kong Vs. Godzilla, the Eighth Wonder of the World
has quite a colourful history. I’ll admit that I’m not as big into giant
monster movies as I probably should be, but I am at least willing to hear it
out… even if the trailers didn’t exactly instil hope for this one. So, as we
delve into the next step in yet another cinematic universe, how does it hold
up? This is Kong: Skull Island.

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Even in the world of Internet criticism and the
democratization of opinions about media, there is still one name and one name
only who is the most important film critic in Australian history: David
Stratton. The Oceanic answer to Roger Ebert, gaining mainstream attention
through the Australian version of At The Movies with fellow critic Margaret
Pomeranz, he basically embodies everything I both love and hate about the
typical newspaper film critic. He has a very evident love for the medium and
helped build up the Sydney Film Festival, but he also employs a lot of the
faux-profundities and literary snootiness that I have railed on many times
before. Still, regardless of all that, I find myself almost required to show
respect where it’s due because of his importance to the industry. Have to
admit, I wasn’t exactly anxious to check this film out, given how this is the
sort of critic I usually try to avoid out in the wild, but considering how this
year has been for Aussie cinema already, I reckon it’s worth being given its
time in the sun on this blog. This is David Stratton: A Cinematic Life.

Sunday, 26 March 2017

It seems that films about time travel, and in particular
films involving time loops, are continuing to grow popular. While my affinity
for sci-fi should make me glad that such a staple of the genre is gaining
ground, I am held back by the simple fact that there are just far too many of
them. Looper, About Time, Edge Of Tomorrow, Predestination, ARQ, Doctor Strange
to a lesser extent, even previous adolescent-centric films like Project Almanac;
all in the space of five years. Yeah, I actually quite like most of these titles
but the basic formula that is at large between them is now starting to get
stale. Variety keeps the world interesting and unless we find a good
third-party premise that can exist beyond both this and the standard superhero
suspension of disbelief, it seems that we aren’t likely to get any. Will today’s
film at least keep things interesting or will the seams start showing? This is
Before I Fall.

Thursday, 23 March 2017

I really, really
wish I would stop jinxing myself. First the whole low attention span thing
comes back to bite me with Dickshark, and now I’m forced to reconsider my
statement about Australia’s output for this year. I say this because we are
once again dealing with a raunchy Australian comedy starring Xavier Samuel… and
it’s really saying something when it’s a follow-up to a film that barely anyone
liked to begin with. Released in 2011, A Few Best Men is a film that I barely
remembered watching less than an hour after sitting through it and what little
I did recall made me feel pretty
comfortable with my general lack of recollection. But even with how bad that
turned out, I won’t say that I was expecting this to be quite so painful. Let’s
kindly get this the hell over with already. This is A Few Less Men.

Monday, 20 March 2017

Even though I have discussed anime on this blog a few times
by now, I don’t want to give the impression that I even classify as an otaku by
most people’s standards. Hell, I know even less about it than I do filmmaking,
but I can at least bluff my way through most films. This fact will become
obvious as we get into more franchise anime films that I have absolutely zero prior knowledge of, with today
being a perfect example. I know a little bit about Sword Art Online based
purely on seeing its name in passing on anime aggregators and the occasional
review by one of my contemporaries, but that barely passes for intel; I’m going
in all-the-way blind on this one. Thankfully, I’m fairly certain that this isn’t going to be one of those weird
sectors of anime where going in unawares results in the destruction of sanity…
not that that would matter much to me anyway, so let’s get into today’s
offering. This is Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale.

Saturday, 18 March 2017

When I reviewed X-Men: Apocalypse, I made mention of the
series’ standing in the annals of comic book film history. Today, I get into
what I believe is the reason why the
original film and its follow-ups are as important as they are. And oddly
enough, it’s all down to a single character: Wolverine. While there are
definitely arguments that can be made regarding the decision to take the X-Men
team as a whole and create a story largely devoted to only one of them, Hugh
Jackman’s performance blended so well with the character that, for the last 17
years, it’s been near-impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. As the
avatar of the new guard of comic book filmmaking, one built on true character
pathos and subtextual themes of prejudice and isolation, he did what was asked
of him almost perfectly. With this in mind, the news of what will be Jackman’s
swan song as the Canadian berserker definitely reached the geek community with
a very heavy heart, something bolstered by how Patrick Stewart was also bowing
out with this film as well. So, not only is this the requiem for two of the
most popular comic character in the comic book film sub-genre but also for the
very team that gave them their prominence in the first place. Very few films
have this much weighing on their success and, from the critical reactions so
far, that weight was delivered back and then some. But what did I think of it? This is Logan.

Friday, 17 March 2017

Seeing everything that I can at the cinemas means that,
whether I like it or not, I’m gonna have to subject myself to crap. I’ve come
to terms with that; it’s part of the “job” description and the hate I end up
generating serves its own therapeutic purpose. However, today’s film is an odd
one with that in mind… in that I have been actively putting off watching this
thing for a while now. Maybe it’s because I know how Ice Cube movies of late
usually turn out, maybe it’s because I have already shown a certain dislike for
most of Charlie Day’s live-action filmography, or maybe the trailer just looked
like garbage from the premise alone. For whatever reason, I kept postponing
going out to see this one. Of course, emulating the feeling of those anxiously
waiting for the appointment for their emasculation, I just wanted to get it
over and done with because I’m fairly certain that the wait is going to be far
worse than the act itself. And speaking of intense pain, let’s get into this
thing already. This is Fist Fight.

Thursday, 16 March 2017

Ah, Levi Miller; it takes something truly special to cause a
feedback loop between my willingness to promote child actors and my propensity
for labelling Australian actors as warning signals that a film they are
attached to will be garbage. To be fair, I doubt anyone could make “my first
lead role was in Pan” sound like a promising start to a career; even the
established actors in that thing barely escaped with their livelihoods intact.
But once you follow that up with the truly lacklustre follow-up to an Aussie
classic that is Red Dog: True Blue, things start looking a little dicey. I
mean, we’re supposed to be good at supporting our own burgeoning talent and
even we’re struggling with this kid.
Well, maybe today’s film will be different… and by that, I mean that I am
sincerely hoping that today’s film will be different. This is Jasper Jones.

Thursday, 9 March 2017

1997’s Trainspotting, directed by the previously-lauded
Danny Boyle, is one of my all-time favourite films. As much as a retooling of A
Clockwork Orange as it is a bladed lower-middle class answer to it, it is a
pitch-black comedic look at addiction, what it means to be a junkie and how
“getting a fix” extends to using people as much as your chosen drug. Through
its incredible acting and acknowledgement of the misanthropic tendencies of its
main characters, it stands as one of the greatest drug films ever made. The
fact that it put both Boyle and lead actor Ewan McGregor on the map is laudable
but barely a footnote in comparison to how enthralling it is on its own. You
better believe, even knowing what happened with Boyle and writer John Hodge’s
last 90’s throwback collaboration, that I was eagerly anticipating this
follow-up. With how my scepticism never wanes even in the presence of promising
works, let’s see how well this decades-removed continuation turned out. This is
T2: Trainspotting.

Tuesday, 7 March 2017

Lines of argument like what I’m about to get into are
usually the sorts of strawman burning matters that get people lynched on social
media for daring to voice it. But as I have already brought up this point in
previous reviews, it’s worth repeating: I don’t care about “whitewashing”
controversies when it comes to film casts. Or, at least, I don’t buy into them
nearly as much as critics have in recent years. The reasons why are many and
varied, from how people tend to cherry-pick examples to rage against to the
inherent hypocrisy involved in isolating only this instance (white actors
portraying non-whites) as a bad thing. But the biggest factor for my own
reasoning is that, considering the utter crap I’ve highlighted on this blog, I
can think of a myriad of worse sins that a filmmaker can commit than anything
involving ethnic (or non-ethnic) casting. So, imagine my lack of reaction to
how the only thing that anyone seems to discuss with this film is how a white
actor was cast as the lead in a film set in China and populated by and
primarily made by the Chinese. Time to dig in, and let’s see if there’s
anything else worth discussing. Spoilers: There ALWAYS is. This is The Great
Wall.

Saturday, 4 March 2017

With the Mardi Gras Film Festival well under way around
here, it’s indie LGBT time again! You know, I’d probably be a lot more enthused
about this if I hadn’t already discussed several rather taxing and emotional
films over the last few days. Given my history with this sub-genre, with films
like Drown, I could already feel the burnout before I even set foot in the
theatre. But it’s like I keep saying around these parts: I welcome the chance
to be proven wrong. Of course, when I usually say that, it’s in the sense that
I don’t like it when my intense pessimism involving certain releases turns out
to be founded: It may be therapeutic to a degree but that I doesn’t mean that I
actually enjoy watching crap movies. This time around, “being proven wrong” turns
out to be accurate in a completely different way. Let’s dive right in and I’ll
explain how. This is Teenage Kicks.